Full Review

22 March 2007 - While Motorstorm offers you rally action crossed with Mad Max and Ridge Racer 7, mundane arcade action Forumla 1 is Sony's answer to a decent car sim.

Developed by Studio Liverpool, Formula 1 Championship Edition allows gamers to relive the 2006 season with all the official drivers, teams, cars, circuits and racing rules.

What you get is a very comprehensive game complete with practice matches, qualifiers and of course the races.

The game is broken down into a number of areas, Quick Race, Multiplayer, Championship and Career Mode. The Career Mode is the main crux of the game where you get to play a rookie taking on the big names in the F1 world, however we found ourselves favouring the Championship Mode where you can relive the entire 2006 series complete with warm-ups, qualifiers, and the race, with varying track lengths for the beginner or hardened fan.

Furthermore in an attempt to help prep the car to your own individual driving skills, you can opt to run through a series of tests on fuel, brakes, general handling and the like. Wanting to be precise, this isn’t a couple of minutes set-up and after a good hour we were still not finished.

As you might imagine driving a Formula 1 racing car is not the easiest task in the world and so the game's developers have, as with previous versions of the game, included a range of driving aids to get you around the track in one go.

These enhancements range from helping you stay on course to breaking at the right time and although this sounds like it's taking all the fun out of it, we still found it a struggle to stay on target, get around the course and win the race. In fact, with pit stops to manage, overtaking to master and still those corners to get around it's not just a case of pressing accelerate and hoping for the best.

Of course this hand-holding option means that the game is approachable at virtually all levels if, of course, you like Formula 1 and as you feel more confident you can slowly turn the features off..

Graphics, as with all the PS3 titles we've see so far, are stunning with the playbacks at times looking like actual footage from ITV on a Sunday afternoon rather than a computer game.

As is the sound, although there is only so much motor noise you'll be able to take before turning it down.

VERDICT
Formula 1 Championship Edition for the PS3 is a very good game that looks amazing on the new shiny console from Sony, however we are struggling to see what, apart from the car and driver stats, is really that different from any other version either released this year or last.

If you don't really care about previous versions or are new to F1 on the console then, hey, there's no problem, but unlike the Nintendo Wii, this game isn't pushing any boundaries on a gameplay front and graphics can only look pretty for so long.